According to Public Health England, approximately 1 in 4 adults worldwide have high blood pressure, and it is projected to affect more than 1.5 billion people around the world by 2025. High blood pressure can lead to stroke, coronary heart disease, vascular dementia and chronic kidney disease, and so places considerable strain on the NHS. As such, heart and blood vessels apps are becoming increasingly necessary in managing health issues such as high blood pressure.

The problem remains, however, that many blood pressure apps are untested, unregulated and potentially dangerous.

In order to address this issue, we’ve reviewed more than 120 of the market’s most downloaded heart and blood vessels apps, looking at 226 criteria across three main components: Data Security (DS), Clinical Assurance (CA) and User Experience (UX). Analysing this data allows us to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the sector and spot the stand-out apps.

To reveal the results of our analysis, we’ve plotted the apps’ data in a 3D chart (above).

This reveals 3 main themes:

1.       This is a market of low quality apps, with just over 75% of the Apps not meeting our quality threshold of 65% and having areas that need addressing. Roughly 25% of these scored less than 45%, which is slightly better than the figures from the Pregnancy Report last month.

2.       There were two stand out Apps (circled in black) that both achieved the high score of 88% – FibriCheck and Lincus Companion. Both the iOS and Android versions of Lincus Companion scored 88% which shows great consistencies across platforms. The FibriCheck iOS App scored 88% whereas the Android version scored just slightly lower at 86% due to a lower sub-score in Data Security.

3.      As mentioned in other Apps Rating Reports, Clinical Assurance is not enough for a well-rounded app. The two outlying Apps (circled in red) both scored well overall, but missed out on edging into the top group due to poorer scores in the Data Security and User Experience sections.
To explore our 3D chart, click here.
Or to read our heart/blood vessels app reviews, follow this link.

Are you a Clinician looking for a new challenge? Have you thought about working in the exciting and rapidly growing world of digital health, helping organisations and the patients they serve to embrace this new frontier in healthcare delivery?

1) ORCHA

ORCHA is one of the UK’s fastest growing Digital Health organisations. We operate the world’s largest digital health assessment platform and library and have a suite of exciting products and services that are all geared towards getting more people using and benefiting from great health and care related Apps.

It’s fair to say we are crazy about health Apps and Digital Health generally. Digital health is rapidly emerging as the major new frontier in healthcare delivery globally and we are at the forefront of this fast moving and exhilarating environment. Based in the Northwest of the UK we are rapidly growing across the whole of the UK, Europe and beyond.

Check us out at www.orcha.co.uk.

At the heart of everything we do at ORCHA is our Review processes and methodology. We believe these are the most robust solutions to the challenging task of overseeing and assessing the hundreds of thousands of Digital Health solutions that are available in order to sort the wheat from the chaff. One of the particularly challenging elements of this is the development of a Clinical Evaluation model that is effective without being too burdensome, time consuming and costly. 

2) What’s the role?

We have been designing an approach to this aspect of our evaluation over the last 12 months, using the core foundations and principles of our overall assessment methodology. We have developed our core systems and platforms to support this approach and we are now looking to recruit a team of clinical leads and advisers in each of the following initial main condition or category areas:

• Mental Health
• Diabetes
• Respiratory  
• MSK
• Maternity
• Dementia

In all of these areas, our leads will need to understand and regularly engage with the broader care pathways around these conditions and to understand the opportunities that Digital Health can offer from primary care all the way through the community, secondary and specialist services.

We are looking for clinicians with relevant expertise and credibility in the relevant area of specialism. This can include clinicians from any sector including GP’s with special interests as well as specialists, as long as the individual concerned is confident in ‘representing’ the specific issues and challenges of that area within the Digital Health context.

Our Clinical Leads will be responsible for the following:

• Delivery of Enhanced Clinical Assessments for selected Digital Health solutions – estimated to be c4-6 per month.
• Provision of clinical advice and guidance and oversight of the ‘Clinical Assessment’ as part of an ORCHA Clinical Senate
• Development and delivery of Digital Health training and development solutions for the ‘target clinical domains/specialisms’ – through the creation of e-learning modules, webinar sessions and conference contributions.
• Ownership and development of a relevant Digital Health ‘expert’ community of professional users 
• Contribution to relevant Digital Health research. 

The role is estimated to require between 1 and 2 days per month with an initial ‘induction’ period of 2 days in ORCHA’s Head Office in Daresbury, Cheshire. There will also be a tri-annual full day and evening Clinical Senate which will bring the whole clinical/professional team together with the wider ORCHA expert group to review and develop ORCHA’s review and accreditation methodologies and related initiatives and projects and to share experiences and insights. 

3) Who we need?

ORCHA is passionate about Digital Health and the opportunities it offers to transform health and care delivery. Our core values are Collaboration, Curiosity, Trust and Fun and these truly reflect the type of organisation we are and how we work. We want to find clinicians and professionals who are:

• Passionate about the opportunities for Digital Health
• Fascinated by Digital Solutions and their impact on patient care
• Are all rounders in their specialist areas with the confidence to manage and oversee a wider team of relevant experts from the wider ORCHA network

Of course, energy, teamwork, great communication skills, enthusiasm and tenacity are all key as well. We are a friendly bunch and very much try to foster a fun and supportive environment. It is however fast paced and we are constantly in a change cycle as we iterate and reiterate what we do to support new clients, new jurisdictions and to take account of the constantly changing and developing environment we are scrutinising, so if change isn’t your thing, it’s probably not the place for you.

On a more practical front, the role is a remote one but you will be required to attend meetings and events in our main offices in Daresbury, Cheshire as well as other locations around the UK and further afield from time to time.

4) What we offer

Hopefully, you have started to get an idea of this. We offer you a chance to immerse yourself in an exciting and rapidly evolving environment that is at the forefront of tackling some of the most important challenges health care faces.

We offer a role that will grow with you and constantly offer new challenges and new horizons. We offer, fun, fast pace and challenge in equal measure and we demand a high level of energy, enthusiasm and commitment in return.

You will be part of a hugely expert and experienced team who are collectively global leaders in this field and you will in turn have the chance to become recognised authorities in this emerging field.

We are still young, but growing fast and you have the chance still to be one of the ‘founding’ team and join us for what we know will be a fantastic journey.

Oh and yes, we do of course offer a fee: starting at £450 per day and growing as the business evolves.

5) Get in touch

If this sounds like a perfect role for you, please drop us an email at awesomejobs@orcha.co.uk with a covering letter and your CV telling us why. Don’t be shy, don’t leave your CV to do the talking, spell it out for us right from the start. If you do, we will be back in touch pronto.

The ORCHA Team

On behalf of NHS organisations, ORCHA tests more apps than anyone else, looking at effectiveness, safety, security and usability. Here are three top scoring apps that are designed to help people better manage their health in the summer months:

Asthma – Smart Peak Flow helps patients to detect and prepare for asthma attacks, providing accurate peak flow charts which can be shared with you.

Hay fever – MASK-air is a pocket log book for your allergy symptoms, providing user-friendly data analysis so you can predict, manage and avoid allergic aggravation.

Travel – Backpack Health lets patients collate their conditions, procedures, allergies and medications in one place and instantly translate into multiple languages.

Due to our continual re-review process, all app scores are subject to change. As such, we’d always encourage you to view our app reviews on our App Library, as this reflects Live data and app updates which are continuously changing. Our re-review process ensures that the most up-to-date information for the latest version of an app can be accessed via our App Library.

After months of winter, summer is a time when many of us take action to feel healthier and more energetic. But a gym can be too intimidating and expensive. Step forward: the inspirational charity Fitmums, that assigns a mentor, who, after a couple of coffee meet-ups, helps people to start their journey to fitness in a wide range of community fitness and running sessions. It’s partnered with ORCHA to help its members access a wide range of safe and effective health apps to further embed health into their everyday lives. See its founder, Sam Barlow, explain why, and the results being seen.

Explore Fitmums’ ORCHA microsite here.